Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Now, while the official news agency in Damascus may have in fact included the words "commits" and "suicide" in their statement, the very use of quotation marks in the story's headline is a clear indication that the BBC considers suicide to be unlikely. Until more is known, this is very misleading for people who only read headlines, like me. Now I'll go read the story and see if I've got anything different to say.

The story says nothing to suggest it was anything other than what was announced by the Syrian Arab News Agency, a suicide. The BBC headline is misleading. Without the quotation marks it would not be.